LMom,

You wrote:
>I can see myself making him do more than needed in subjects which are not my favorite. I think I could manage to do it with math, but LA could be a very different story.

Language Arts is not my strongest subject either (I was a good student in school in it, but it�s not the area I really am master of). Our kids score well above grade level in language arts, but not as high as they do in reading or math � I�m not sure if that is a sign of their relative innate abilities or a sign that I am doing a better job teaching reading and math.

My own theory is that the core of Language Arts is being successful at communication, both sending and receiving, and, that, the best way to do that is to practice � i.e., to read a lot and write a lot (I guess, to speak a lot too, but humans naturally do that!). We normally go to the public library once every week or two and the kids have been writing little stories from early on. We read our science and history books out loud together, with one of the kids reading and my helping with meaning or pronunciation of difficult words, with complicated concepts, etc.

We avoided LA workbooks completely for several years. (We did have handwriting workbooks, since my handwriting has always been horrible and it seemed best for the kids not to imitate me.) We have recently started on the �Editor-in-Chief� series of workbooks which has the kids finding errors in various written passages � the kids like these a lot and the workbooks seem less mindlessly repetitive than the LA workbooks I had in school. We�ve also just started on the McCall-Crabbs 3-minute reading comprehension exercises, which, I hope, will help advance their reading comprehension (although they do already score very high on that).

The kids have also been doing some work in a series �Hey, Andrew! Teach Me Some Greek!� designed to teach elementary-age kids some real classical Greek. I have not made that a very high priority, but I hope it will help with vocabulary roots. W may try some similar Latin stuff (there�s a Latin series from the same people), since Latin roots seem to be everywhere.

We have not really done any formal spelling at all, but the kids seem to be pretty good spellers. I have taught them the parts of speech, and we will eventually do some sentence diagramming, which I and my friends liked as kids.

Anyway, we�re taking a somewhat laissez-faire attitude to LA, but it seems to be working okay.

You also wrote:
>I would just make the book available and see if they like it. Or make it an option "Today you can work from Fred's book or this one." or find corresponding chapters for whatever you are doing.

Thanks for the suggestion � I think I�ll do that.

My brother, whose kids are older than ours, actually told me some years ago to always give kids choices rather than commands: just frame the choices so it works out fine either way -- kind of sneaky, but it does seem to work. And, in fact, I do usually try to take the tack of �Would you like to practice piano or do math now?� if I can (of course, they often both want to practice piano at the same time, which is not possible), and the kids have some input into the books we choose to study for science and history.

I think you may actually have a translation of the math book I am talking about � I�ll PM you with details so we can find out.

Incidentally, I probably sound a lot more sure of myself on all this than I really am. We just discovered the Fred books last summer and decided to move into them. And, I�ve gotten some writing/composition workbooks through the charter school that I have not yet quite figured out how to use. So, I�m definitely learning by doing! But the kids do seem to be moving forward rapidly and seem to be reasonably happy. The one thing I am pretty sure of is that kids should not be denied learning about interesting stuff just because it�s not �normal� for kids their age or �developmentally appropriate� to learn it.

All the best,

Dave